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The Journal of Pacific History the Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea

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The Journal of Pacific History the Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/279942791 The Journal of Pacific History The Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea ARTICLE in JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY · AUGUST 2015 DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2015.1060925 DOWNLOADS VIEWS 8 7 2 AUTHORS: Jennifer Gabriel James Cook University 5 PUBLICATIONS 1 CITATION SEE PROFILE Michael Wood James Cook University 17 PUBLICATIONS 25 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Available from: Jennifer Gabriel Retrieved on: 29 July 2015 This article was downloaded by: [Jennifer Gabriel] On: 09 July 2015, At: 14:53 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG The Journal of Pacific History Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjph20 The Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea Jennifer Gabriel & Michael Wood Published online: 09 Jul 2015. Click for updates To cite this article: Jennifer Gabriel & Michael Wood (2015): The Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea, The Journal of Pacific History, DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2015.1060925 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2015.1060925 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Downloaded by [Jennifer Gabriel] at 14:53 09 July 2015 The Journal of Pacific History, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2015.1060925 PACIFIC CURRENTS The Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea JENNIFER GABRIEL AND MICHAEL WOOD ABSTRACT Adding to the existing literature on the history of forestry policy and reform in Papua New Guinea (PNG), this paper focuses on the Malaysian Rimbunan Hijau Group (RH) – the largest actor in PNG’s forest industry. Rimbunan Hijau’s dominant presence since the 1980s has been accompanied by allegations of illegality, corruption and human rights abuses. This paper outlines RH’s initial involvement in PNG’s forestry sector and discusses some of the more controversial aspects of its engagement with concession acquisition processes and public policy, as well as its responses. Key words: Rimbunan Hijau, Papua New Guinea, forestry, timber, policy, governance The Rimbunan Hijau Group (RH) is one of the largest fully integrated timber groups in Southeast Asia and one of PNG’s largest log harvesting and export companies. Rimbunan Hijau was established in 1976 in Sibu, a town in Sarawak (Malaysia). It quickly expanded its control of timber concessions in Sarawak and, by the 1980s, began diversifying and expanding overseas. Downloaded by [Jennifer Gabriel] at 14:53 09 July 2015 Jennifer Gabriel – College of Arts, Society and Education, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies, James Cook University. [email protected] Michael Wood – College of Arts, Society and Education, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies, James Cook University. [email protected] Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank Colin Filer for sharing his extensive knowledge of PNG’s forestry sector with them while he was a visiting scholar at the Cairns Institute in 2013. Gabriel wishes to thank the Cairns Institute and James Cook University for their support of her ongoing PhD research on the Rimbunan Hijau Group. Wood wants to acknowledge the Australian Research Council’s grants that have funded his work in the Western Province and James Cook Uni- versity’s financial support and provision of teaching relief. The authors have benefited from some excellent comments from reviewers, a number of which appear, only partially transformed, in this paper. © 2015 The Journal of Pacific History, Inc. 2 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY This paper builds on the existing literature regarding the history of forestry policy and reform in PNG by examining the activities of RH.1 After outlining some of the processes that have contributed to RH’s poor reputation as a corporate citizen in PNG, we describe the company’s attempts to counter the negative represen- tations through a reliance on orthodox economic understandings of ‘development’, ‘growth’ and ‘global equity’. We examine the responsiveness of RH’s tactics and con- sider its use of media and public relations campaigns. We highlight the strategies used by the company to neutralise criticisms about the degree to which its presence causes harm to people and environments.2 We also explore RH’s far less controversial diver- sification into other sectors of the PNG economy. We highlight that by the 2000s, RH had moved to supplement its often problematic capital accumulation in the forestry sector with additional forms of investment in PNG’s print media, supermarkets, tourism and property development. The company’s diversification has not dampened its role in the ongoing ‘social drama’ of PNG’s forest policy.3 In PNG, and elsewhere, RH has become less reliant on logging and thereby has partially redefined itself as a productive, as opposed to an exploitative, part of PNG’s future. These changes are encapsulated in RH’s creation in Port Moresby of ‘Vision City’, which is its most recent material statement of what it considers to constitute ‘development’ in PNG. But we also highlight how, in the 2000s, RH continued aggressively to pursue its interests in the natural resource sector by acquiring controversial leases over land and by strongly supporting amendments to the Forestry Act 1991, which reflected its approach to forestry regulation in PNG. These strategies, while often very successful, have not resulted in a ‘politics of resignation’4 because the company’s attempts to legitimise its cor- porate power within PNG have largely failed, with the term ‘RH’ now being popu- larly synonymous with the problems of the logging sector, corruption and anti- Chinese sentiments.5 Yet despite the contestations of various actors, NGOs and social movements, the RH Group is still the biggest investor and largest employer in PNG’sforestrysector. Downloaded by [Jennifer Gabriel] at 14:53 09 July 2015 1Colin Filer with Nikhil Sekhran, Loggers, Donors and Resource Owners, Policy that Works for Forests and People 2: Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby and London 1998); Colin Filer with Navroz K. Dubash and Kilyali Kalit, The Thin Green Line: World Bank leverage and forest policy reform in Papua New Guinea (Canberra 2000); Colin Hunt (ed.), Production, Privatisation and Preservation in Papua New Guinea Forestry, Instruments for Sustainable Private Sector Forestry (London 2002). 2Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch, ‘Corporate oxymorons’, Dialect Anthropology, 34 (2010), 45–48. 3Filer and Sekhran, Loggers, Donors and Resource Owners, iii. 4Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch, ‘Capitalism and the politics of resignation’, Current Anthropology, 51:4 (2010), 459–86. 5For a discussion of how, in the 1990s, Chinese were regarded by people directly engaged with RH’s logging operations, see Michael Wood, ‘“White skins”, “real people” and “Chinese” in some spatial transformations of the Western Province, PNG’, Oceania, 66:1 (1995), 23–50. For more recent accounts, see various articles in sections 1 and 2 in Paul D’Arcy, Patrick Matbob and Linda Crowl (eds), Pacific–Asia Partnerships in Resource Development (Madang 2014). THE RIMBUNAN HIJAU GROUP 3 The material we cover answers the following questions: . How has RH been able to dominate and partially transform PNG’s challenging forestry sector over the last three decades? What strategies did RH pursue? . Is diversification a long-term strategy to reduce RH’s reliance on logging? Is diversification a key to the success of the company in PNG? . Or does evidence exist that RH has sufficient power and influence to continue to operate in the timber industry despite the political, legal and bureaucratic obstacles? Is this owing to weak regulatory controls, or has the PNG government actively supported the company? RIMBUNAN HIJAU ENTERS PNG: AN OVERVIEW The decision of the RH Group to invest in PNG was driven by the need to find new sources of timber to meet the growing demands of the company’sglobalmarkets, owing to a dwindling supply of harvestable logs from its home state of Sarawak (Malay- sia). The overseas expansion of the RH Group was fuelled by the Malaysian govern- ment’s decision to gradually
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